Mario De Brabandere : 'I am good at not thinking'

Photo: Mario De Brabandere, Untitled, 2017, oil on panel, 40 X 30 cm

We are proud to announce the gallery's second solo exhibition of Mario De Brabandere. You are warmly invited to the opening on Sunday 3 September, 3 - 6 pm.

Opening speech by Philippe Van Cauteren, artistic director of S.M.A.K., Museum of Contemporary Art Ghent.

The practice of Mario De Brabandere (1963, Tielt) consists of a process of a spontaneous and continuous creation. This leads to series of drawings in which he explores form, composition and combinations of colour. In recent years it is striking that the works are increasingly purely abstract. The paintings, too, often consist of taut planes and forms: in them, the initiating traces can however still be sensed in tentative pencil strokes.

According to the De Brabandere, the carefully selected material itself fulfils half of the work. His attention goes to the particularities of the wood and paper he works on, but also to their previous usage or history. It is the material that spurs De Brabandere to work with it. And in so doing, De Brabandere wholly trusts the power of his own intuition. Thinking doesn’t ever get in the way.